Fixed that for you. You don’t think, you just feel and intuit wrongly.

I’m an atheist because there is no evidence for a deity, just like everybody mentioned earlier, but you conveniently forgot. You haven’t presented any evidence for a deity, just hallucinations and delusions. Where is the equivalent of an eternally burning bush?

Exactly what Shiloh claimed, while its arguments, like yours, weren’t honest inquiry, and had a strong odor of presupposition for their imaginary creator, just like yours. You know the conclusion you want, so you form sophistry to get there, rather than asking the right question. The right question isn’t whether you can argue the perceived need for a creator, but rather what conclusive physical evidence is there for said creator that isn’t already explained by science? And the evidence, or rather lack thereof, gives the answer. Your creator isn’t necessary.

Just above the comment box at the bottom of the page it says “Leave a Reply … Allowed tags” . The first one in the list [a href=”” title=””] is the one you can copy and past to leave a link. You must close with [/a] after. (I must use square brackets to comment or else it will be treated as code. You will use the angular brackets as shown in “Allowed Tags”.

For example I would write: [a href=”https://theophontes.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/jesus-on-a-stick/” title=”Jesus on a stick.”] Click here.[/a]

If I now replace the square brackets [ with sharp < : Click here. The server will convert to the correct code. You can mouse over to see the contents too.

@ chigau

I, too, have the feeling that I am chopped liver.

@ rajkumar

By the way, when I called you ‘dear’, that was a projection too. But you liked it then, didn’t you?

No, more like condescending. And troll-like. You really don’t get anything at all, do you?

Of course, you don’t. I think you are atheist, because you wanted to be atheists.

Just because you base your reasoning purely on what feels good to you, doesn’t mean that everybody does.

Projection. It will fuck with your head if you don’t watch out for it.

In point of fact, most people do reach their conclusions first and try to fit evidence to the conclusion post facto. However, it is possible to test those conclusions, and whether the evidence fits them, and whether there’s other evidence that might contradict the conclusions.

You scorn these methods. Therefore you are likely to be wrong. Indeed, you’ve been very little but extraordinarily wrong about every topic you’ve brought up so far, from time dilation to the null hypothesis to Freud.

The available evidence supports my hypothesis that you do not care about whether your beliefs are true, you protestations notwithstanding. People who care about truth make an effort to identify what can falsify their claims and investigate them.

Here is another projection for you: It is you people who are afraid of being wrong. If I am wrong, I lose nothing. I am not a theist, or an atheist. If God exists, fine. If God doesn’t exist, that’s fine too. But if God exists, you lose your atheism. This is why you try to protect it, and you do so by hijacking scientific terms, by giving atheism a scientific touch.

Here is another projection for you: It is you people who are afraid of being wrong. If I am wrong, I lose nothing. I am not a theist, or an atheist.

Really? Because it seems to me like refusing to commit to one side or the other of a clearly binary proposition is a classic example of “hedging one’s bets”–which is what people who are afraid of being wrong do. I don’t mind being wrong. I think about the possibility that I’m wrong fairly often. If some positive evidence for some deity or another, I think that would be very interesting. If it were Yahweh, I might be scared, because who needs a cosmic genocidal asshole running around one’s planet? But scared of being wrong? Nope. Once again, you are wrong.

If God exists, fine. If God doesn’t exist, that’s fine too.

I used to think that way. Then I took the next step of examining the evidence. Now I still feel that way, except that I think that the probability that god/gods exist is very, very low.

But if God exists, you lose your atheism.

It would be no big loss. It’s just a label that identifies me as someone who embraces skepticism and rationality, and came to a conclusion that is at odds with the beliefs of the majority in my society. If religion weren’t a thing, I wouldn’t need to bother with the label.

This is why you try to protect it, and you do so by hijacking scientific terms, by giving atheism a scientific touch.

I’d ask you to give examples of how I’m hijacking scientific terms, but I already know you’re a lying, trolling piece of solopsistic trash, so I shan’t bother. Just know that you’re still wrong.

In principle yes (at least if we are honest). In practice no. This is because there is currently no proof at all that such a supernatural deity exists. Zip! Nada! Nothing!

All a goddist need do is bring credible evidence to the table. Or, as Nerd has pointed out, bring us that burning bush.

And we don’t even need to get all scientific and disprove the god hypothesis (being unfalsifiable, this would be a bit awkward), we need merely show how (whichever) god came into existence. This we do know. They were all – each and every one of them – made up by people.

I don’t think Raj knows what “projection” means. Funny, he was the one spouting off about psychology… When he began his last comment by saying, “Here is another projection for you,” it turned out to be the absolute truth. But Raj is not given to truth-telling, so I’m guessing it was unintentional, and born of ignorance. And laziness.

Most of us say that if you can show we’re wrong then we’ll admit it. Of course you goddists have been trying to show atheists wrong for millennia without success. As time goes on, the possible evidence for gods gets less and less, but that doesn’t stop you goddists from pretending it exists.

I am not a theist, or an atheist.

You certainly do an excellent imitation of a goddist. On the Dawkins Scale you probably rate about a 2.

But if God exists, you lose your atheism.

Did you figure that out all by yourself or did your mommy help you?

This is why you try to protect it, and you do so by hijacking scientific terms, by giving atheism a scientific touch.

Now I understand why you reject science. You don’t understand it and you’re afraid if you investigate it too much you’ll find your gods (and no, asshole, I don’t believe you when you say you’re not a theist) don’t exist. Your projection of your fears to others is quite pathetic.

It’s really weird to think of actually wanting to be an atheist, any more than wanting there to be unicorns or wanting santa claus to come and deliver presents each year. It’s not really a question of want, but what position best explains the evidence.

It’s funny that people try to put whatever psychological factors they can on atheists, because at the end of the day, atheists are vindicated by such reasoning – if God was anything other than a fiction, then one could show atheists as being fools without needing to try to psychologise it. Atheists are more than willing to point out why they don’t believe, so if those arguments and evidences are unaccounted for then it doesn’t matter what “just so” story you can make up about someone’s psychology. It doesn’t matter, and frankly is a matter of intellectual cowardice.

Whether or not this is true, it’s quite irrelevant unless you can show that the case atheists are putting forward is wrong. Spending so much time trying to deconstruct the psychology of an atheist is a waste of time so long as the arguments are neglected.

Are atheists afraid of being wrong? Perhaps some are. But the question is, are they wrong?

Given the evidence, I, like PZ, Dawkins, and most of the gun atheists would acknowledge the evidence. Where is that evidence again? It isn’t found in gaps in knowledge, or in hallucinations and delusions. It is not imagufactured evidence which is all you have shown and talked about. It is solid, physical, can be studied by one and all, and no question about the fact that divine will is upon that object. Something equivalent to an eternally burning bush. Until then, your blither-blather of mental masturbation is utter and total fuckwittery, and you are WRONG.

Actually, there is something else I need before I can be perfectly content. I need people like you to realize that truth matters and it’s not okay to lie.

Then, I am afraid, you are asking for the impossible. You cannot change the way other people think, and you cannot change the way they live their lives. You have your freedoms, others have their freedoms.

There is a slow (far too slow for most of us) decline in religious belief around the world. There are some exceptions, such as Israel, Russia, Phillipines and Poland. Though slow, the change is accumulating. It would be nice to think there will be a critical mass one day and we can all move beyond religion and all the hate and ignorance it aspires to .

Will you stop your freakish masturbation and present some evidence, because so for pretty much everything you’ve said is just fractally wrong from whatever perspective one takes.
Also, you seem to think that your weird brand of ‘agnosticism’ somehow makes your position more valid. Well guess what… Nope, wrong again. All you’ve done is create an arrogant position that permits you to feel superior to both theists and atheists.
You’re an idiot, Rajkumar.

Then, I am afraid, you are asking for the impossible. You cannot change the way other people think, and you cannot change the way they live their lives.

Because you would like to believe this? Are you scared of what we are saying here? That we challenge the grip you ego has on your intellect?

A sign of intelligence is the ability to change one’s thinking when one is proven wrong. What may be true for you is certainly not true of people on this thread. Or of people in general.

You have your freedoms, others have their freedoms.

Then you are taking your freedoms for granted. The last 2000 years have seen people being robbed of their freedoms. In large part by others who feel that their imaginary deity endorses their sick behaviour. But if you think it is all about Raj, just say so. We shall keep arguing and and fighting for our cause because it is possible to reverse the oppressive influences of religious ignorance and authoritarianism. (I am fascinated if you can explain your flippant views to mormon child brides or women in rural Pakistan. Or any other people who are subjugated by perverse religions.)

If you don’t mind I’ll riff a little on our two linkies. It appears (from the report I linked to) that as people get older they tend towards religiousity. IIRC, the Aussies call this “cramming for the finals”.

So to paraphrase one of the Huxley quotes:
*ahem*

“…half an hour before closing time, … somaalmighty jeebus had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”

Then, I am afraid, you are asking for the impossible. You cannot change the way other people think, and you cannot change the way they live their lives. You have your freedoms, others have their freedoms.

This is done all the time.

It is how advertising works. It is why being gay is increasingly accepted in many parts of the world. It is why women are no longer subjected to the same level of discrimination common, even in my lifetime, in many parts of the world.

If you say such idiotic things as this, are you surprised when you treat you like an idiot ?

@rajkumar, you have misread me. I don’t know if it was deliberate, subconscious or accidental, but you have misread me.

Otherwise you would not ask if God could not be both immaterial and supernatural simultaneously when I proposed exactly that.

Apart from that, you have missed the point of Occam’s razor.

There is nothing in our observation and study of abnormal sensory experience that has been unexpected enough to require more explanatory power than ‘the brain did it’ hypothesis provides.

I mean you are suggesting a god the presence and actions of which are indistinguishable from there being no god at all.

If I am mistaken and you are not suggesting that your hypothetical god’s presence is indeterminable from the simple undirected, inanimate function of the universe, than the onus is on you – the one proposing the hypothesis – to lay out where you see the anomalies that differ from our existing god-free models that you suggest are attributable to god(s).

Now earlier you did suggest that certain altered states of perception might be those anomalies, but the rest of us have done a fairly good job of presenting you evidence that those can all be adequately explained within the current, accepted, god-free model.

Essentially, the ball is currently in your court to provide us a reason to believe the current god-free model is inadequate to explain what is observed of the world, and of minds. Otherwise we have neither reason nor motivation to abandon an explanatory model which works.

Theists may be afraid of death, but whether or not that is true, it doesn’t change one bit whether or not God exists – just theier ability to recognise a case. If you just undercut a theist’s argument by saying they are afraid of death, it’s doing nothing to address the case for God. It’s the very definition of an ad hominem attack.

If you just undercut a theist’s argument by saying they are afraid of death, it’s doing nothing to address the case for God. It’s the very definition of an ad hominem attack.

(I am not sure who this is addressed to.)

Fear of death would explain why they are more likely to seek out comforting, non-rational explanations for how things fit together.

It goes some way to explaining where the motivation came to invent the god-concept in the first place. Or why people feel impelled towards believing in such god/s.

I fail to see how you can say this would be an ad hominem. Fear is the very foundry in which gods where manufactured. It is important to recognise this in building a case against gods.

(I am aware that some gods did evolve into mythical entities that were worshipped for reasons other than fear. But it is important to map out the entire process of god formation. And this certainly requires the acknowledgement of fear of death. Also in the case of contemporary people turning to ready-made gods.)

It goes some way to explaining where the motivation came to invent the god-concept in the first place. Or why people feel impelled towards believing in such god/s.

Agreed.

I fail to see how you can say this would be an ad hominem.

Two reasons.

Firstly, it’s a non sequitur to the argument at hand. How do you know that fear is the main reason they as individuals hold it? If someone puts forward the cosmological argument, claiming they just believe it because of fear is going after the person and leaving the argument completely unaddressed. They may be engaging in motivated reasoning, but that doesn’t say anything about the validity of the cosmological argument. Unless one means to imply that the cosmological argument is only compelling to those who fear death, in which case the argumentative burden is still on showing the flaws of the cosmological argument.

Second, those general patterns are just that. How any individual believes isn’t necessarily encompassed by these rules. It could be that believer X doesn’t have a fear of death at all, but simply cannot see how the universe could come about without something willing it to exist. You could go on and on about how much they fear death, and not only would it not address their argument but you would be mistaken in doing so.

Imagine the inverse case, that people claim that atheism is about the desire to be immoral or that atheism stems from a bad relationship with one’s father. Now one can debate whether or not those are actually true, or to what extent they were true. But surely you can appreciate that a fundamentalist saying that atheists are just looking to sin against God isn’t so much wrong as it is a non sequitur. Being told that you think that you’re God yourself, or that you blame God for all the horrible things in your life, these aren’t arguments against the atheist position even if there may be some truth in some of these assertions. Even if there’s any merit to any of the claims at all, it still doesn’t take away from the rational case for atheism.

Here is another projection for you: It is you people who are afraid of being wrong. If I am wrong, I lose nothing. I am not a theist, or an atheist. If God exists, fine. If God doesn’t exist, that’s fine too. But if God exists, you lose your atheism. This is why you try to protect it, and you do so by hijacking scientific terms, by giving atheism a scientific touch.

It’s the other way around.

I, for one, am a scientist. As far as I know, all falsifiable god hypotheses have been falsified, and unfalsifiable hypotheses are simply not worth entertaining. Atheism isn’t a thing that I acquired and could lose, it’s merely the fact that I’m unable to believe without evidence.

There is a slow (far too slow for most of us) decline in religious belief around the world. There are some exceptions, such as Israel, Russia, Phillipines and Poland.

No, Poland is not an exception in my experience, secularization is just delayed there. Israel… the ultra-orthodox procreate a lot, so maybe that offsets the bleaching of the faith. Belief in Russia was already fairly low to begin with, as God first failed to smite the godless usurpers for 70 years and then replaced them by the mammon-worshipping Mafia.

Thanks, that clarifies it for me. (I trust this gets through to Raj when he wakes up.)

@ David Marjanović

Aside: All my Polish buddies at varsity were hedonistic atheists of the highest order.

But on the other hand, the report (see my #29) does seem to indicate – in keeping with your comment:

In the case of Poland, it appears that its strong Catholicism trumps the secularizing influence of Socialism. There is also evidence that religious competition and/or religious conflict may stimulate higher belief. Belief is high In Israel which of course has a sharp conflict betweenJudaism and Islam

Poland is a mixed bag but should come off my list. (The broad trend is lessening belief even if secularisation is not up to speed.)

I think you are atheists because you wanted to be atheists. Science is just your advertising billboard.

We are atheists because we are willing to consider the question of whether God exists or not as honestly, objectively, and rigorously as possible. This entails using science — it’s not simply a decorative addition for effect. It’s the method.

Please keep in mind the fact that many versions of God are either very esoteric, very interesting, or very gratifying. If true, people with a curious scientific bent — such as ourselves — would be fascinated and thrilled with such an exciting new discovery and dimension to reality. Our focus would not just be on our personal satisfaction, but on the impact this would make for the advanced understanding of humanity.

And yet we doubt even this. Truly, it can’t be for the reason you suggest — that we just “want” to be atheists in order to be contrary or cool or something — not when we are the group most interested in pushing the boundaries of what we, as human beings, are capable of learning about the nature of the universe we have found ourselves in. Rather, our lack of belief is the direct result of the cautious and humble method we have chosen to use on an issue we are taking seriously — rather than personally, as an expression of our subjective hopes, desires, and untestable speculations.

Watch out for those untestable speculations, by the way. That is what Ockam’s Razor is used on. It doesn’t shave possibilities from the universe: it cuts back our tendency to get so far ahead of ourselves that’s there’s just no way of checking back on reality. .. and discovering that we’ve made an error.

We have to be able to change our minds. Otherwise, we create at least one infallible God — and it’s us.

If FTB do not offer you a blog of your own, then I would like to read you the following declaration in My Capacity of Its Highness Teh Self-appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life:

*ahem*

The Committee of the 37th Pleniary Commission of the 7th Convocation for the 3rd Five-Year Plan of the Peoples’ Comintern of the Ministry of Peace of the Pharyngulite Peoples’ Republic of Southern The Endless Thread, heretothereinafter referred to as The Zombie Thread, has noted with admiration your posts on TZT. You are hereby granted Honourary Citizenship in Perpetuity.

You should. Having read biographies of him I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Darwin was a genius or had unusually gifted intellect.

What he did have was patience, honesty and perception.

His discovery wasn’t due to a gift of greater intelligence than others; it was due to hard work, obsessive collecting and cataloging (ie data collection) and being perceptive and open minded. It was not a Eureka moment, he filled journals with notes and thoughts trying to make sense of his data. He collected a lot of data, saw something interesting in it and had the patience to keep at it until he figured it out.

Nerd, what happened? The banhammer never falls on an idiot like you is a living proof that there is something seriously wrong with blog, right? OK I know. You have special links with PZ Myers. He listens to you, acts on your suggestions a lot, somehow. I have seen this happening before, and it can happen again. But who cares. It is you buffoons who lose.

No. Though I am going to admit that I tried my best to explain to you how it was a useless concept to discuss there. You don’t know where to draw the start line and where to draw the finish line when you talk about evolution.

Kel: I have explained to you many times already in that thread. The universe is not a human, but we humans quite often try to understand the **whole universe** from a human standpoint. It can work sometimes, and it does, but sooner or later we are going to face a thick brick wall. An example is when we try to figure out the pre big bang conditions. It is not possible, unless we have evolved to the point where we can imagine existence without time and space. At the moment, we can’t. So, it is a useless attempt.

You don’t know where to draw the start line and where to draw the finish line when you talk about evolution.

Evolution is not the only algorithm in existence, it was an illustration of the abstract principle. If you understood the abstract principle, you would see why your criticism of how I handle evolution is misguided. The problem is that you’re not thinking in the abstract, you’re not engaging with how processes can create outcomes. If you would, you’d see why it didn’t matter one bit to my argument whether or not we know everything about evolution. Your response missed the mark.

But I have to go now, for good this time. I will save PZ the hassle of lowering his infamous banhammer. Can’t say it wasn’t fun, because it was. I hope you could see it this way too….:)

To give a friendly suggestion before I leave: The world outside this blog is not as stupid as you people may think it is. So if you have this blog, and you claim you are the champions of free speech and tolerance, then prove it… Do so not by threatening people with banhammers and bans and calling them trolls when you are out of arguments, but by doing just the opposite….:)

Algorithmic processes are put into use by various engineering disciplines. They work! And it doesn’t matter one bit whether or not we can understand pre-Big Bang conditions or whether or not we have a perfect view of evolution to know how such processes work. That’s the problem, you’re fatalistic agnosticism about ultimate knowledge is irrelevant to the real knowledge we can. We may never know whether or not life exists on other planets, but what does that say about knowing whether life exists on this one?

The universe is not a human, but we humans quite often try to understand the **whole universe** from a human standpoint.

How else are supposed to understand it? After all, most of us here are human.

calling them trolls when you are out of arguments,

Bullshit. We’ve been calling you a troll for a very long time. We still have arguments. You’re the one who keeps redefining words, denying what you have written, and flat our refusing to supply even one iota of actual evidence for you ‘god is consciousness/intelligence/the universe/drugs’.

See ya

Bye

The odds are currently at 7 to 1 that he fails to stick the flounce. You bet seven, you can win one. Any takers?

An example is when we try to figure out the pre big bang conditions. It is not possible, unless we have evolved to the point where we can imagine existence without time and space. At the moment, we can’t. So, it is a useless attempt.

You know the kind of people I detest? People like you who have given up without trying or giving other people the chance to figure things out. It is such a lazy form of thinking. No wonder you are such an idiot. You have given up on learning. I mean, imagine if people would have given up back then about finding the composition of a star, and scientists would have listened to their advise. OH WAIT, SUCH PEOPLE EXISTED!

Any research that is irreducible to actual visual observation is necessarily excluded in regards to the stars,… we can never by any means investigate their chemical composition…
-Auguste Comte-

Thankfully, many scientists didn’t listen to his advise. And hopefully, no one starts following your advise.

@rajkumar
And one more thing. If scientists would have stopped figuring things out because we can’t imagine things that are outside our normal experience, they would have never figured out the quantum nature of subatomic particles. So stop trying to tell us what we can and can’t know because you have no idea the kind of bizarre and unimaginable things we actually do know.

I am concerned about our resident house-pet D666. It has been gone for days. What if it gets ridden over by a banhammer? Perhaps we should post fliers? Or light a fiery hecatomb to the Goddess Abeona…?

PZ left a post telling yec123 that he could only post in the zombie from now on and yec left a post starting “Just one last post…”

I think all the evidence was purged but there might be traces if you look for it. I think it was the “Atheists are Satanists who burn churches therefore it’s okay to protest an atheist convention” thread.

But I have to go now, for good this time. I will save PZ the hassle of lowering his infamous banhammer. Can’t say it wasn’t fun, because it was. I hope you could see it this way too….:)

We like troll-stumping here. You must have noticed that the threads which fill up fastest are the ones where there are trolls. The most adverse reaction most people here have experienced while arguing with you is excessive eye rolling and facepalming.

To give a friendly suggestion before I leave: The world outside this blog is not as stupid as you people may think it is.

Indeed not. I suspect it is even more stupid than we can ever imagine. If there’s one thing that I have given up on, it’s to find out just how stupid people can be.

So if you have this blog, and you claim you are the champions of free speech and tolerance, then prove it… Do so not by threatening people with banhammers and bans and calling them trolls when you are out of arguments, but by doing just the opposite….:)

1) Nobody is forced to come here. Nobody will follow you when you leave.

That you keep coming back indicates that you quite like it. Like I explained to a certain xian ghoul earlier, we provide a public service here – we help would-be martyrs to satisfy their persecution complex without experiencing any actual persecution.

2) It seems to me it was you who was out of arguments. You kept engaging people on tone and psychological motivations, which are not arguments but unsubtle, and frankly boring, ad-hominems.

Nerd, what happened? The banhammer never falls on an idiot like you is a living proof that there is something seriously wrong with blog, right? OK I know. You have special links with PZ Myers. He listens to you, acts on your suggestions a lot, somehow. I have seen this happening before, and it can happen again. But who cares. It is you buffoons who lose.

Snicker. Good to see that your sense of agency is hypersensative in multiple instances.

Here’s a thought, try mastering the BASICS of philosophy, like ontology and epistemology and basic logical syllogisms before you try to figure out TEH UNIVERSE